


Wake Up, For Us

by QuintessentialNutcase



Category: Original Work
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Other, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 20:17:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11539683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuintessentialNutcase/pseuds/QuintessentialNutcase
Summary: Your heart is broken, the first time you see it.Inspired by a prompt from writing-prompt-s on Tumblr:"Everyday that you wake up, you find a note on your nightstand. Each note is exactly the same. The note tells you simply to “Wake up. For us.” These four words start to appear everywhere: billboards, labels, store signs, etc."





	Wake Up, For Us

Your heart is broken, the first time you see it.

Your mother says that, in time, Jo will forgive you. Sam agrees, but that’s just Sam, the kindest and most gentle person that you ever met, always there when you need a shoulder to cry on.

It doesn’t help.

Pulling yourself from your bed, cheeks streaked with tears, you try to carry on. The world feels like it’s falling apart. Jo was everything to you but, as your mother says, it was too serious for someone of your age, too jealousy-ridden and suspicion-infested for someone of just fifteen.

You sit at your desk, sighing down at the homework that felt so important yesterday. Sam said not to worry about it, but you doubt that Mr Stewart would agree.

You pull a pen from your case and read the first question, again and again, still not quite going in. Then something catches your eye from the edge of your vision. Through the window and through the rain, at the bus stop where you wait every morning for ten minutes longer than you should have to, there is a sign.

It reads: “Wake up, for us.” You try to recall having seen it before but you can’t.

You shrug it off, an advert, you suppose. Thinking nothing of it, return to bed, cry and doze.

~

It isn’t until the next year, a few months after your sixteenth birthday, that you see it again.

You are in the midst of your exams, the most stressful period of your life so far, as all of your teachers have warned. You are beginning to agree.

Sat in class, you read through your syllabus. Four whole sections were new, alien, completely unheard of. But only for you.

You had studied them last year, apparently, in June. All you remember of June was pain and fear. Pain every morning when you woke up and remembered. Fear was around every corner for who would be waiting.

At first you chuckle, it’s typical, you think. Then you frown, you think of the date. The exam was next week. Then, as you think of the volume of work, your mental calculations turn sour. It’s impossible, you realise, to learn it all.

You freeze, as the teacher calls your name, asking you what’s wrong.

You realise then that your vision is blurred with pooling tears and your cheeks flushed red with anxiety.

“Nothing,” you stammer, “I’m fine.” you whisper.

You rush to the hallway next break.

Opening your locker of five long years, you search for the long-lost notes. You must have made them, you think, you must have.

You hide your face in the cluttered space when you resign to your fate. You never made them, you sob, you’re doomed.

In the corner of your eye you see a crumpled scrap of paper, not one that you put there yourself.

It’s easy enough, you reason, to pass messages into lockers.

You unfold it, carefully and frown when you read it.

“Wake up, for us.” It reads. You don’t think much of it, the lockers all look so similar, it’s easy to mistake one for another.

It must be a note for someone else, misplaced. You have bigger problems, like the class you once aced.

~

Another year gone, and you begin learning to drive.

Your patient instructor sits by your side.

It’s your final test, what you’ve been waiting for, building up to.

You turn and you break, in all the right places, you know you’re succeeding, then one unfamiliar sign throws your concentration.

You don’t stop when the light is red, your foot still on the pedal and your eyes cast out of the driver’s window.

You hear a shout from your teacher, and your eyes go back to the road, a car’s horn accosts your ears and the lights of oncoming traffic shine in your eyes. You glance back to the sign.

It is no longer there.

You remember what it had said.

“Wake up,” It said, clear as day, “For us.”

The words sound familiar, hauntingly so, just beyond reach, so you ignore them and go.

~

Years pass without incident, birthdays come and go.

You applied for university, and accepted, you left home, packed your bags and entered the world. Now you sit, cradling the strongest coffee sold, in a greasy café, awaiting the cure for the pounding in your head, on a fine Sunday morning.

Your phone bleeps and you wince, it’s a text from Sam.

“How’re you holding up?”

You frown, and reply, describing, colourfully, the condition you’re in.

Sam’s response is serious and sombre, and you question what you don’t remember about the night before.

The next text says, “We saw Jo, remember?” You don’t remember a thing and you say as much.

Sam laughs out loud and says that after all this time, nothing else is expected.

You exclaim, “That’s unfair!”, but your friend doesn’t relent, and you think that perhaps, like always, Sam’s right.

Your food arrives, and your headache eases, you eat and enjoy.

When the meal’s done you pay and head home, intending to nap for the rest of the day.

You push your change in your pocket and scan your receipt. Then you stop walking and pause, looking back to the cashier.

At the top of the receipt, printed large and in bold, are the words “Wake up, for us.”

You remember a poster, a note, and a sign, you weigh up the probability of coincidence and conclude that it’s possible.

Unlikely, yes, but possible.

You make a mental note and push the receipt into the pocket of your coat.

~

As the next few years of your life pass, you notice those four fatal words more and more.

You push them aside, you ignore them and you make a life for yourself in the world.

You have a steady job, you enjoy it in the morning and by the afternoon you want nothing more than to return home, where your family and you will dine peacefully in your cosy townhouse. You married the love of your life at just twenty-five years old, and by thirty your family had grown to include an energetic puppy and two equally energetic children.

You open your front door after a long day at the office, you’ve seen those words three times today, no more or less than usual. Once in the paper over morning coffee, once at the traffic lights on the sign of a doomsayer, and once more on a memo left on your desk. These words have followed you through the years and like everything, you have simply grown to accept it.

You toe off your shoes, placing them neatly by the side of the hall, and walk into the living room.

The smell of your favourite meal greets you in a wafting hug as you approach the kitchen. You stand in the door way and see Sam.

You remember the date and smile, seven years now since the wedding, and counting.

You approach your love and wrap your arms around the apron-clad waist.

“Good evening to you too.” You can feel the smile across that familiar face as you hum into the soft brown hair that smells faintly of vanilla, you are unsure if it is from cooking or soap.

“Are the little’uns at my mother’s?”

“Just as we planned.” A chuckling nod and a spin, and now you are face to face with your best friend of nearly three decades.

“It’s just you, me, our favourite meal and a bottle of wine.”

“Brilliant. Tonight, you’re all mine.”

~

Like most people of the twenty-first century, you have a smart phone. It’s hardly a notable point about your life, but you spend quite a lot of time scrolling and scrolling through dubious news articles, amusing videos, and photos of things that your friends found interesting.

One day, the words are different. A photo slowly climbs your screen and you read its words several times, over and over. It tells you that you are in a coma, and that the world in which you find your self is not real. It tells you to wake up, “For us”.

On another day, you would have ignored it, some strange joke of someone with far too much time on their hands.

But this day has been long and those words have presented themselves many times. The first had been on the back of your instant coffee’s packaging, the second had been on your cup – at the café you visit every morning after discreetly pouring the bitter mug-full down the sink and leaving, so as not to offend Sam, who believes that you love the coffee waiting for you when you wake up.

The next was a text message from an unknown number and the penultimate was a voice mail from an unfamiliar, almost robotic, mouth.

The last time was heard from your left, as you cradled the hand of your sleeping child in your own injured palm, sitting in a hospital ward. Sam whispered them in desperation after so much violence, and after days of hearing nothing but silence.

~

Your tiny child grows weaker and weaker, and one day grows too weak.

You grieve with your family for days, which turn to weeks, months and then years.

Yet, a tiny doubt lingers in the back of your mind.

Is this real? You ask yourself, almost daily.

Yes, you decide. It must be.

Sam never recovers, not fully. The cheerful and sensitive attitude, the one you fell in love with, has dulled as the open wounds in that streaked a heart so compassionate healed, into tough scar tissue.

Your child, and now your only child, grows older, the memory of a sibling becoming a distant dream.

One day, you think back, whilst gazing at a dreaded sign, to where it all began, almost thirty years ago now.

You were heart broken, you remember. You had walked home in the rain, crying with every step. You crossed the road at your usual place, a quiet road filled with elderly people who rarely drive or have visitors. It had been so long since you saw a car down there that you didn’t bother to look.

You turned your head as you stepped down from the pavement and onto the road below. A light shone at you, and caught, as a deer in head lamps, you remember you froze.

With a heart shattered into a million pieces, and tears mingled with rain streaking your face, you were in two minds about your own intentions, unclear on your thoughts when you stepped into the path of a car.

There, your memory was hazy, shocked at your own actions, you raised a hand in apology to the stopped driver, and hurried home to cry into your mother’s arms.

Or did you?

You remember from that point on as clear as day, in fact it felt like mere minutes had passed since that moment.

You read an article once about how time passes much faster in the world of dreams, and a small part of you remembers the sound of screams.

~

Even more of your life passes and your fiftieth birthday is celebrated with the few friends you retained from senior school. It is that rainy day that you ponder how few new faces you have grown close to over the years. You have met a few, of course, but you think to how the subconscious fills gaps with faces vaguely known.

Over the last few years, the study of dreams has begun to fascinate you.

You rarely dream, when you sleep, but you often question if you are ever awake.

The party consists of a meal, cooked by the local fish and chip shop, no expense spared, and several glasses of bubbling champagne.

You glance out of the window, watching the streaks of rain dawdle down the glass, merging and splitting as they progress through their journey. The hedges move just beyond the drive.

You squint, pulling your glasses from your pocket and settling them atop your nose, focusing on the shrubbery.

For a moment, you could swear that an all-too-familiar face flashed amongst the dark leaves in the dark night.

It was a face you had not seen in years, decades even, and yet it almost looked unchanged.

Sam’s hand rests on your shoulder, and a kiss presses into your cheek.

“Happy birthday.” A whisper, almost a question.

You smile and agree, “It is, happy, isn’t it, my dear?”

Sam smiles and replies, “The best all year.”

~

That face haunts you, the face in the rain. It comes and it goes, and always, every single time, those words will be somewhere near.

“Wake up,” it says, “For us.”

You stand and stare one day, making eye contact for the first time.

The face is attached to a body, which has a hand cupping a steaming mug of tea.

Jo always did prefer tea to coffee.

That shark-like smile spread across that face, and memory upon memory came flooding back.

The distance blurs your vision a little, just enough that the wrinkles are imperceptible and the grey hairs blend into the blonde, that face is unmistakable.

Your first thought is, am I being followed? Has this face been lingering in my hedges and outside my windows?

Your next thought was no.

Of course, it hasn’t, because it all makes sense to you now.

You don’t have any hedges or windows.

You smile back, then you return to your car and you drive home, ignoring the call from your boss. The drive seems to pass too quickly, you smile as you leave your car and unlock your door.

Your precious little one has long since left home, and your precious other half is at work. It is, after all, the middle of the day. You should be at work yourself, but you have another plan today.

Your mother passed away many years ago, you cried at her funeral, but since then you have had a revelation, she’s hasn’t passed away.

That smiling face sits in the back of your mind.

You walk towards the kitchen, playing your plan over in your mind.

“For us,” you think, your mother perhaps? Sam? Your father left the picture before you first saw the light of day, you have no siblings or grandparents.

You pick up a long knife from the knife block, and twirl it between your fingers.

The quickest and surest way to wake up from a dream is to die, if the films and books are to be believed. You always wake before you hit the bottom of the cliff from which you fell, you wake just before the axe falls onto your neck or the walls squeeze too much or the car comes too close.

You suppose that in your case, that is not entirely true. The car came too close, and it was then that you slept, and it was then that your family wept.

You twirl the knife further, and closer and closer.

You hear your door bang, kicked and broken, you know who it is without a word spoken.

“It’s not real, is it Jo. It’s all just a dream.”

“Wake up then, and be sure you don’t scream.”

You draw the knife closer, it feels cool against your skin. You’ve barely been eating; your bones feel thin.

It’s never felt real, not since that day, not since your whole life was taken away.

Your whole body urges you to return to your life, your real life, which what you are doing as you draw with the knife.

It burns at first, a white, searing pain that fills your mind. Then comes a calm, as the blood cascades and you feel an embrace from behind.

Jo lowers you to the ground, and begins to laugh. The grating sound makes you feel like a calf.

A calf bred for slaughter, bleeding out on the floor of the abattoir. You look, with pleading eyes, to your captor.

Your mother said that Jo would forgive you with time, you think, now, that she was being kind.

“I never forgave you,” A whisper in your ear. “I’ve been planning this for years upon years.”

“What?” You choke. Your vision is going dark.

“Your family will think that it was their failing, and it was, in a way. They took you from where you should have been waking, each morning, by me, not this false play-acting. You were never happy here, look what you’re doing. You’re so desperate to leave that your escape is dying.”

“But it’s not real.” You say, you try to understand but your thoughts are slow and the colours feel grey.

“It shouldn’t have been,” Jo rocks you and cries. “But you left me alone, so I filled you with lies.”

You claw at your deceiver as the life leaves your body, it isn’t meant for Jo, but you still say, “I’m sorry.”

You slip from the world, or perhaps you were thrown? Either way, for your love, the truth was never known.

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little trigger warning, for any one affected, suicide and emotional manipulation occurs in this dark little insight to my mind.  
> Check out my blog with other short stories, poems and more at http://www.elizabethbyles.opinious.co.uk/  
> And my Tumblr at https://quintessentialnutcase.tumblr.com/  
> Thanks for reading.  
> Also, if anyone can tell me how to embed hyperlinks into words when uploading on AO3 I would love to know because I hate putting whole links onto things.


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